Five times, the golden spear pierced his chest.
Five times, the golden spear lodged in his throat.
Countless times it had pierced and pierced him, until the tally had reached twenty-eight.
Twenty-eight times.
The number of times Ian had been defeated.
And the number of times Ian had died.
Pierced, torn apart, gouged out, ripped to shreds.
They were the price Ian had paid to stand against an absolute being known as a Sword Master.
Because Ian was the only one who could face a Sword Master head-on.
Because Ian was the only one who could die and start over.
Ian had died twenty-eight times.
And now, he had begun his twenty-ninth battle.
For someone like Ian, surrender did not exist.
Whenever he died, he rose again and took up his sword.
Whenever he was defeated, he started over and raised his shield.
But…
Though he repeated death and continued to fight,
his attacks grew bolder, more reckless.
And he no longer had any instinct for self-preservation.
There was no defense, either.
He focused solely on one thing: cutting down his opponent.
Even the shield he held was merely a means to continue the battle.
It was not a tool meant to keep him alive.
If he died, that was that.
He could just start over from the beginning.
With that logic, Ian gradually stopped caring for his own body.
He began to take his own life lightly.
The more he died, the longer Ian could fight.
But the more he died, the more often he threw himself away.
Even when he protected Haede from the golden spear that kept coming for her,
the number of times he himself was struck by that spear had fallen.
But the number of times he took it in someone else’s place had only risen.
My heart had died once before.
So I understood Ian’s current state better than anyone.
More than those people who were looping alongside him.
That was why it was dangerous.
Something kept whispering in my ear that Ian could not die anymore.
It was true that every death continued to hone your strength.
But your heart was being worn away just as much.
As you began to take your own life lightly, you cast aside your own heart.
You grew accustomed to pain and suffering.
And once you became accustomed even to death—
even if you finally drove your sword into that man’s heart,
could you truly say that the one left standing then
would still be yourself?
I did not know.
I did not know why you were so desperate.
I understood that you were continuing this fight with that mysterious thing called a Dream Ticket.
But the pain was real.
And death was real, too.
You only came back afterward.
I, who looped with you, Lady Isabella, and even that man might not know it,
but what you felt was real.
You acted as though it did not bother you.
But with every loop, your soul was being gradually worn away.
So then—
why were you trying so hard to save Haede?
More than half of Ian’s deaths had come from throwing himself in harm’s way to save Haede.
But you said that if Haede died, Iris would awaken as a saint.
And when Haede had actually died, Iris gained a holy aura. You said that if she awakened as a saint, the Sword Master before us would certainly be defeated.
Yet you did not fight in earnest.
Your mind was filled only with starting over.
You let the golden spear you could have knocked aside pierce your heart.
I do not really know.
Perhaps Haede is simply that precious to you.
Or perhaps you are saving her just because you want to save her.
After all, the time I have spent at your side has been very short.
But still.
I do not think I can bear to watch you die anymore.
I cannot bear to watch you grow accustomed to it anymore.
At some point—
like that moment when I dreamed an unpleasant dream,
like my mother, who gave me that delicious apple and then simply left—
I am afraid you will not come back again.
So—
"Let’s run away, Ian."
I do not know why you have to die.
I do not know why you have to fight.
Even though there is an easier path right beside you.
I do not know why you are protecting Haede even as you wear yourself down.
You pretend to be fine, but I know.
I know that your soul is trembling badly because it keeps dying.
So—
let’s run away.
I will be your legs.
Ride on my back like before, and let’s leave the academy.
"Kafka… we can talk about this next—"
Next?
When is next?
‘Next time, I’ll pick pockets…’
"Listen."
There is no next time.
Ian, you must not die anymore.
It is too dangerous if you die.
"Can you guarantee that the Dream Ticket will keep turning back your time?"
Is Haede
really that precious to you?
"You were trying to die. You were trying to die, weren’t you? Even though you clearly knew that spear was flying toward your chest. You bared your chest to it."
Is Haede precious enough for you to throw everything away?
I…
have no one left but you now.
The hand clutching his collar tightened.
Like a child who did not want a cherished toy taken away.
You will try to leave, won’t you?
You will shake off this hand and run to help those people.
But—
if you keep dying,
if you keep repeating a battle you cannot win,
I feel as though you will leave just like that.
And that frightens me.
An apple I only got to bite once.
I am afraid it will be cruelly taken away before I can ever eat that apple, which I tasted only once, again.
You gave me an apple.
You gave me such a sweet apple.
After I had eaten nothing but apples that were dry and bitter, you gave me one that tasted so good.
You even promised to give me another delicious apple.
So are you going to leave me, too, just like that person did?
I did not want to see Ian die anymore.
You said you would teach me. What kind of teaching is it to keep dying over and over?
My grip kept tightening, and I could no longer maintain my expression.
I did not know why. I only wanted to take this guy and run away.
I could simply feel it instinctively.
That my face probably looked frightening right now.
"Are you scared?"
Those were the three words Ian said as he looked at me.
He did not shake off my hand.
Nor did he reject my unreasonable demand.
He merely said that.
"Yeah."
I was scared.
Amid all these repeated deaths, I was scared that I would never see you again.
I did not understand why you, who were no saint, tried to walk such a thorny road.
"So let’s run away. Far away."
"Yes. As she says. Run far away."
Someone slowly approached us.
A woman who kept producing lightning at her fingertips as she came toward us.
Isabella.
She approached one step at a time,
never ceasing to fire her magic at the enemy.
"Like this child says, you may run away now. You have done your best."
As though agreeing with me, she spoke quietly to Ian.
"Ha ha, Lady Isabella. You are really stoking my competitive spirit."
Ian answered Isabella flippantly, but—
"Do I look like I am joking?"
Isabella did not humor his joke.
She filled her magic with mana and fired it at the enemy.
And merely snapped coldly at Ian.
"Twenty-eight. Twenty-eight times. That is how many times you turned back time."
"That is not very many."
"That means you have died twenty-eight times."
Isabella gritted her teeth.
Perhaps she did not want to hear Ian’s voice. She poured all her emotions into her magic and unleashed it.
"Have you forgotten, or have you simply let go?"
"………"
"Ian, you can run away."
She nodded as she said it.
"You do not have to die anymore."
Sharpening her magic even further,
pressing her feelings into every fingertip,
"Dying hurts. So leave what comes next to us, and go with this child."
"No."
He firmly cut her off.
Then—
"Then how many more times must you die before you are satisfied?"
Gritting her teeth, she snapped at Ian.
"How many times do you need to die saving Lady Haede before you stop?"
As though in sympathy with her emotions, her magic, too, shone brightly.
"Until I defeat that bastard."
Slip.
His clothes slid free from my hand.
With those words, Ian escaped my grasp.
Then he placed an apple firmly into my hand, which had nowhere left to go.
In that bright-red apple, I saw my reflection.
I thought I would look frightening.
But I did not.
"My squire is watching. It would be embarrassing if I ran away looking pathetic."
As he said that, he took a step forward and stood beside Isabella.
"Even though that child wants you to run away?"
"Even so."
Ian gave a faint smile at Isabella’s words and swung his sword through the air.
"There is something I cannot give up."
He glanced at me, then continued softly.
"I said I would become your path. I said I would teach you."
The squire’s contract.
The promise Ian had made to me.
"If I run away, there would be no meaning in having made that promise."
As he spoke those words,
Ian kindled sword aura around his blade.
But Ian, that—
made no sense at all.
Accepting death because you could just retry—
how was that any different from running away through death?
I knew because I had died once after being struck by an apple.
I knew because I had wanted to escape this miserable life of being a wolf.
You were only trying to run away.
Telling yourself over and over that you could retry.
Taking life lightly and relying on death, all to flee from defeat.
If that was the case—
if you would flee defeat through death—
would it not be better just to run away with me?
The sword aura kindled by pale-white Ian.
It was like the morning star hanging in the night sky.
And Ian running toward the battlefield looked like a moth mistaking that star for a light and about to smash its head against it.
I wanted to bite the nape of his neck and run far away.
But now I did not know what to say.
I did not want to see Ian die anymore.
But I did not know what I could say to someone who was trying to flee through death because he did not want to lose again.
I did not want to hurt you, who had given me an apple. But I no longer wanted to watch you die, either.
What was I supposed to say…?
Then—
a small hand grabbed his collar.
The hand that had been producing lightning just moments ago.
Isabella’s white hand.
"Don’t be ridiculous."
That white hand seized his collar, and red eyes, cold enough to seem bewitching, glared at Ian.
#
After I shook off Kafka’s hand,
this time Isabella’s hand seized me.
We did not have time for this.
I could see it.
From the moment Isabella stopped casting magic,
cracks had begun to show more and more clearly in Angelica’s expressionless face.
I needed to shake off this hand and rejoin them quickly.
"Don’t make excuses."
Isabella’s grip began to tighten.
It was a grip I could have shaken off as easily as I had Kafka’s.
"What makes an idiot who has given up on fighting and is trying to escape through death think he can teach anyone?"
"That’s—"
"Do you really not understand what that child meant when she said you were trying to die?"
I did not understand what Isabella was saying.
Or what meaning it was supposed to hold.
Was there any reason to force myself to continue a battle I had already lost?
What reason was there to keep fighting after Haede died?
Even if I stubbornly continued a battle I had already lost, it was not as though I could win.
If I had intended to let Haede’s death be the end of it, I would not have started this retry in the first place.
If it looked like I would lose,
could I not just discard that possibility and retry?
"You are getting stronger. I will not deny that. You are surviving longer and longer, after all."
Then she gritted her teeth once.
"But!"
She stared into my eyes with her red ones,
pulling my collar toward herself.
"Dying hurts."
It did hurt.
It hurt like fucking hell.
I had died twenty-eight times, and though I thought I had grown numb to pain,
being stabbed to death by that spear hurt like fucking hell.
Around my fifteenth death, I had thought about it.
Did I really have to suffer this much?
I knew it in my head.
If I did not throw myself in harm’s way for Haede,
and let her die as that bastard had said,
then I knew I could defeat him easily without choosing to die like this.
So I had wondered whether I should throw it all away and use the easiest strategy.
But what could I do?
My heart told me not to run away.
Still—
dying hurt.
And the relentless battles were exhausting.
So because I had become accustomed to death,
I had simply started thinking that if I was going to lose, I should die quickly and start over.
But—
"It does hurt."
"And yet you keep dying?"
Isabella was angry now.
She had cast aside all the refined decorum of an old-fashioned noble.
Why was she angry?
And why had Kafka suddenly told me to run away?
Come to think of it, around my twentieth death—
when the spear came close enough to touch with a single breath between us,
had I ever once thought of batting it aside with my sword?
Or had I simply thought, Well, I’m screwed,
and decided to start over?
Probably the latter.
I had grown strong enough to endure twenty-eight deaths until my friends arrived.
But perhaps, without realizing it, I had tucked away the thought of winning this present battle somewhere in the corner of my mind.
That was why
Kafka had suggested we run away together.
And perhaps that was why Isabella, who had become a looper after dying once, was this angry.
Death made people numb.
You still felt pain.
But it was enough to erase your fear of death.
They said pain that did not kill you made you stronger.
But did pain that killed you cut off even your possibilities?
I looked at the gauge.
The gauge I had not even looked at because I had had no time amid the unending fights.
19.4%
■■□□□□□□□□
The gauge I remembered as being about half full had somehow nearly reached the bottom.
"Ian, look straight into my eyes."
I was pulled back into reality from a momentary reverie.
The silence that had swallowed all sound became a battlefield full of clashing steel.
And I was looking into Isabella’s red eyes.
"If you like Haede that much, I do not care if you throw yourself in harm’s way for her. But—"
But.
"Do not give up."
"I have not given up."
"That is not what I mean."
Then she lightly slapped my cheek.
Not hard enough to make a loud sound like when she had struck the prince.
It was a gentle brush of her hand against my cheek, as if telling me to come to my senses.
"Do not tell yourself that you can simply turn back time."
"Do not tell yourself you can leave it to the next time. Do not abandon the present and escape by dying on purpose."
"………"
"It is not as if you were unfairly and suddenly killed by poison. You have had plenty of chances."
Poison.
I knew.
Poison was Isabella’s trauma.
The cause of Isabella’s regression,
and the item that gave her a new beginning.
Just like
my Dream Ticket.
"So do not run away. If you are going to keep running away, then run away with Kafka. But if you are going to keep fighting, do not deliberately seek death."
Isabella let go of my collar and turned her back to me again.
"Like that promise we made in the club, that we would search together."
She fired lightning at Scaramuccia once more.
"I cannot hurt alongside you. But I will fall alongside you, at least."
Lightning bloomed at her fingertips once again, and the strands of lightning entwined with me like long threads.
The spirit contract connecting me with Kafka also entwined around me like a red thread.
If I died, they would loop too.
I was not the only one regressing.
If I died, they would continue this endless battle too.
Honestly.
Was deciding to die really such a selfish thought?
Yes.
What kind of chivalry was it to run to the past because I could die and start again?
I could never be an example for Kafka like this.
"Don’t die."
Then Kafka spoke one sentence to me from behind.
"You are not trying to teach me how to die, are you?"
"That’s right…"
"Then don’t die. You can promise me that, right?"
"Yeah."
I would not try to die.
From now on, I would return to my original resolve.
To before my first death.
To when I did not know what effect the Dream Ticket had.
No more retries.
I would see this through with Scaramuccia in this very run.
I rode Kafka and charged forward.
After being scolded by Isabella, something came back to me.
For some reason, the golden spear that now brought me down did not frighten me anymore.
Even if it struck me and took me down, I planned to take it down with me.
As I kept charging forward to finish Scaramuccia,
I saw someone.
Someone with brown hair streaming behind her, slipping between them with cold sweat running down her face.
It was Haede.
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